


Deep Throat

by Daftinthehead (intravenusann)



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - 1970s, American Politics, Casseroles, Journalism, M/M, Smoking, Watergate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-02 02:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20268526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intravenusann/pseuds/Daftinthehead
Summary: He checks for the flower pot in Ryan’s apartment window. He leaves a few more notes in the New York Times. (It's a Watergate AU.)





	Deep Throat

**Author's Note:**

> My research was not thorough. Also the title is probably misleading, I apologize! Inspired by a friend of mine.

Marchbank walks over carrying an armful of newspapers and Shane quickly sips his coffee. He never knows from TJ’s face what, exactly, he’s thinking. Rubin also picks up her coffee with one hand, and starts to tap the keys of her typewriter with the other. Even the vase of tulips on her desk looks nervous.

What has Bergara written now, Shane thinks.

But it’s not the Post that Marchback slaps down on Rubin’s desk. 

“Looks like the hack at the Post is also a crackpot,” Marchbank says. 

On the interior pages, Shane sees a grainy photograph of a young man labelled as Ryan Bergara. He looks very, very young.

“From Spirit Houses to White Houses: The Path of the Post’s Foremost Reporter,” the headline reads. The first ‘graph reads with things that Shane already knew, and it’s not hard to laugh.

After their first meeting, Bergara had clicked the stop button on his recorder and leaned toward Shane.

“We’re off the record now,” he had said. “But I have another question for you.”

And then he’d asked Shane, “Do they let you see the UFO debris?”

When Shane had sputtered with disbelief, he received a far-too thorough explanation of little men from Mars coming to Earth. 

“There’s… there’s no such thing,” Shane had insisted.

“Alright,” Bergara had said, “I guess that’s above your pay grade.”

He laughs now, reading about Ryan Bergara’s college journalism career in California’s haunted houses and murder suspects claiming to be possessed by the devil. It’s not a secret; Ryan Bergara’s a twitchy and superstitious little weirdo. 

“I wonder if the leak is actually a ghost,” Shane says, and Marchbank walks away laughing.

“No one is going to believe him after this,” Marchbank says, through the open door. “Or they shouldn’t.”

Shane sips his coffee and looks at college-age Ryan Bergara. He’s got more hair than the current version, but it’s cut much shorter.

“Is it that impossible?” Rubin asks. 

“What?” Shane asks. The idea that the president would take mob money and orchestrate a bungled robbery of the DNC just to keep himself in power?

“Ghosts,” Rubin says.

He looks at her and sets his coffee cup down. “Sara, please.”

“These are odd times,” she says. “I’m not ready to write off anything. There’s a lot we don’t know.”

Shane laughs, mostly because it makes her sound like… well, like Ryan.

He drives out toward Falls Church that evening and stops at a payphone on the corner. He parks a block away and walks to it, quarters jingling in his pockets.

“Hello, Bergara speaking,” Ryan says.

“You know who this is,” Shane says.

Ryan sighs through the phone. “I wondered when you’d call. Can we skip through the gloating?”

He sighs again, and then keeps talking. “Or, look, I’ll set the phone down and you can gloat all you want for five minutes. Then I’ll pick up and we can… do whatever. Hang up if you just called to rub my nose in it.”

“Mr. Bergara,” Shane says. “That would be a lot of quarters.”

“Only two,” Ryan says. “They haven’t raised the rate.”

“If I was going to gloat,” Shane tells him. “I’d want a full hour.”

“Oh no, no way,” Ryan says. “Other people call me. This isn’t a private line.”

Shane laughs, a little. “I didn’t call to gloat.”

“Really?” Ryan says, and he sounds genuinely surprised.

“I think we should meet again,” Shane says.

“_Really_?!” 

Shane pulls the phone away from his ear slightly. The streetlamp nearby flickers and then shorts out. Shane stands in the dark listening to Ryan breathe through the fuzz on the line.

“Yes,” Shane says. “I have some new information for you.”

“Alright,” Ryan says. 

“And… come hungry,” Shane tells him.

It’s an impulse, really. His mother always used to make something when the neighbors were having a hard time. Shane thinks about trudging through a foot of snow holding a casserole dish in his mitten hands.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ryan asks.

“You’ll find out,” Shane says.

“Goddamn,” Ryan says. “This week has been bad enough already.”

Shane drives home. In the morning, he drives through Northwest and pulls over to pick up a newspaper labelled for Mr. Bergara. He opens it to page 20 and draws a little clockface around the page number. Then he folds the paper back up with a smile and slots it back into the stack.

At 2:30 a.m. on Friday, Shane pulls his Royce into the sub-basement level of the garage.

Ryan Bergara, not as young as his college picture in the Tribune, wears jeans with the cuffs rolled up and his shirt partially unbuttoned. He leans against the wall of the garage smoking. The sodium lights wash out his skin and deepen the bags under his eyes.

The inside of Shane’s car smells like a pasta bake. He leans over and opens the door.

“Get in,” he says.

“What?” Ryan asks.

“Come on,” Shane says. “It’ll be weird to eat off the trunk. I brought silverware.”

Ryan slides into the passenger seat of Shane’s Silver Shadow. He looks around for a moment and then at his cigarette. He opens the door to toss it out onto the garage floor. After he stamps it out, he takes his shoes off. He leaves them outside the car. 

Shane laughs.

“What’s all that for?” he asks.

“There’s carpeting in here,” Ryan says. “I’m not going to mess up this upholstery. It definitely costs more than I pay in taxes.”

“Probably,” Shane says, though he feels slightly embarrassed.

Ryan takes the tape recorder out of his bag and sets it on the wood-panelled dash.

“Wait,” Shane says. “I brought food. And wine.”

Ryan’s eyebrows rise into his uneven hairline. Shane reaches back for the bottle of red wine in a paper bag. It’s not the best, but it was what was available. Shane says something about the state of Virginia’s liquor laws. Ryan jokes about the draconian nature of Republicans. Shane laughs. The cork pops and, right away, the car starts to smell like cheap wine.

“I hope you don’t get pulled over,” Ryan says. 

“I might,” Shane says. “But I won’t drink.”

“It’s your wine,” Ryan protests.

“Have a glass for me,” Shane tells him.

“If you insist,” Ryan says.

There are glasses for the wine and plates, forks, and knives for the pasta bake in the casserole dish on the backseat. Ryan tells him it smells amazing, gushes like Shane’s going to get this on the cover of Good Housekeeping.

“Turn your little tape recorder on,” Shane tells him. “I’ve got stories to tell you.”

And he is just that, a story-teller. Ryan calls him an incorrigible gossip. And Mr. Bergara -- he’ll take all of Shane’s office gossip and he’ll check the dates. He’ll request documents. He’ll verify locations and money trails. He’s thorough. He’s persistent. Shane thinks about that and he fights a smile.

“We’ve really made it hell for a lot of people lately,” Shane explains. “A lot of pointing fingers. People talking about how to ‘get’ you.”

“Which people?” Ryan asks.

Shane lists some names.

“Yeah, I don’t mind if they think I’m a bit of a demon,” Ryan says. “I’m happy to poke them with my pitchfork.”

He mimes with his pen as he takes notes. Shane laughs. 

“They got me pretty good this week,” Ryan says. 

“With all the ghost business?” Shane asks.

Ryan makes a noise that could be agreement or not.

“Anyway, I think they mean, ‘get’ like put you in prison,” Shane says. “Mafia ‘get’. Speaking of which, lots of talk about Hoffa in the office. People say he wants to rework his deal.”

“Oh?” Ryan asks. 

Ryan eats his pasta bake. He drinks three glasses of wine, too. One for Shane and two just for himself. His cheeks look flushed in the yellow light of the Shadow’s interior. It bounces off the polished dash and hits him under his square, stubbled jaw. Shane swallows.

It was just neighborly, he thinks. He was trying to say sorry -- but what is he sorry for? Does he feel guilty for laughing at Ryan’s dumb beliefs? He’s laughed in Ryan’s face and not felt bad about it. He’s surely not sorry to be tattling on his coworkers and their superiors and their superiors’ superiors. Let the whole lot of them eat each other over Ryan’s articles.

“It’s good to see you,” Ryan says.

Shane clears his throat. “Good to see you as well, Mr. Bergara.”

“Please,” he says. “You’ve got to just call me Ryan, or I’m going to start calling you Mr. Throat.”

“Ryan,” Shane says, like a warning.

Ryan leans over the dash and clicks off the tape recorder.

“Shane,” he says. 

Shane wishes he could get a copy, suddenly. He wishes that Ryan hadn’t turned it off, but maybe -- maybe he’s made a mistake. Maybe he’s said Shane’s name like that before and it’s on a tape somewhere. That would be incriminating, wouldn’t it? Shane should have copies. Just in case. To be sure.

“Thanks for dinner,” Ryan says. “It was really delicious.”

“Get home safe,” Shane tells him.

“I will,” Ryan says. “I promise.”

Shane is home wishing he could call Ryan from there, but he knows he can’t. There’s a payphone down by the grocery. But he’s got to go to work in a few hours. A few weeks later, Ryan’s article comes out -- pulling the curtain back on a money trail that stretches across the country. Everyone scrambles to refute it, but they’re a pack of filthy liars.

“What a morning,” Ms. Rubin says, sipping her coffee. “That little ghost scandal didn’t stop him at all.”

“I doubt there’s anything that could stop Mr. Bergara from attacking the current administration,” Shane tells her.

“Do you suppose he’s a communist?” she asks, looking up at him.

“Well, he’s a journalist,” Shane says. “And he believes in ghosts.”

Lesser things have made Reds out of better men. Shane is wondering, honestly. Couldn’t the emotions that had him crushing garlic and salting pasta be used against him like that? Isn’t it just a little un-American of him to sit in a parked car with another man having dinner at two in the morning? Probably. He checks for the flower pot in Ryan’s apartment window. He leaves a few more notes in the New York Times.

On August 10th, 1974, Shane drives through Northwest. There hasn’t been a flag posted on the windowsill for over a year. Ryan got all he needed and it would be dangerous for them to see each other. Shane hasn’t been inside a payphone in just as long. It’s just shy of four in the morning, as he parallel parks. He easily finds Mr. Bergara’s copy of the Times. He draws a clock for ten. Some of the bars will still be open, Shane thinks.

The day is chaos. Ms. Rubin’s carefully pinned curls collapse before lunch. Marchbank looks like he could kill a man, like perhaps he already has. Shane’s stomach hurts, but it’s got nothing to do with politics. Or, if it does, it’s tangential.

He buys a bottle of Moët on his way back home. He shaves after eight. He puts on a bit of cologne.

The impossible has already happened, he thinks. Mr. Ryan Bergara has taken down the president of the United States of America. And Shane Madej can’t not love him for that. Can’t not be in love with him. He wraps two slim champagne glasses in his best dinner napkins so they’ll be safe in the front seat for the trip.

Ryan looks like he’s already had a drink or two, when Shane pulls into the parking lot.

“Congratulations,” Shane says, getting out of the car. He cradles the champagne in his arms. The stems of the glasses fit between his knuckles.

“I couldn’t have done it without you,” Ryan tells him. 

Shane smiles.

“You’d better be having some of that,” Ryan says. “You deserve it.”

“I’ll have to drive after,” Shane says. 

“Let’s go out on the town,” Ryan says.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Shane says. “I’d like to keep my job.”

Ryan looks at him for a moment, glances at the bottle and the glasses.

“It’s twenty minutes to my apartment by cab,” Ryan says. “You could meet me there.”

Shane’s mouth is suddenly dry.

Ryan’s lips squeeze into a firm line. It takes all the fullness out of his lower lip. 

“Unless you don’t want to,” Ryan says. “If it’s too much of a risk, I understand.”

“I want to,” Shane says. “But first, champagne.”

Ryan smiles again, that brilliant victorious smile. He looks a bit flushed already. And he smells like he’s been smoking a cigar. In his shoes, Shane probably would have too. But he’s not Ryan. 

“Did you have a hot date today?” Ryan asks. They lean against the hood of the Shadow with their arms close enough for Shane’s blazer to brush against Ryan’s sleeve.

“Not really,” Shane says. “Unless you count this.”

Ryan looks again and his lips become very firm.

“Are we counting this?” he asks.

“We could,” Shane says. It’s the most nervous he’s ever been. He drains his glass. The champagne is more sour than he expected it to be.

Ryan reaches up and puts a hand on Shane’s shoulder. It’s a reach for him and his hand isn’t even close to Shane’s neck. Any heat he feels, he must be imagining.

“Let’s count it,” Ryan says. He keeps his hand in place and downs the rest of his champagne in two swallows.

“I’m going to head back to my apartment,” Ryan says. “Will I see you there?”

Shane swallows. “Yes.”

“Give me a twenty-minute head start,” Ryan says. He reaches up from Shane’s shoulder and touches the collar of his shirt. It’s clean, white and stiff. Ryan looks at it for a moment. Then he looks Shane in the eye. His fingers touch Shane’s jaw.

“Starting now,” Ryan says. Then Shane watches his back as he heads for the stairs. Shane looks at his watch. He goes to gather up the champagne, his champagne glass. If he doesn’t go after Ryan, then Ryan’s taken one of a cut crystal set. This seemed like a special occasion. The bottle sweats in Shane’s lap. He sits in the driver’s seat with the car running, because the night is hot. It’s August, after all. 

He wraps the bottle in the napkin, though that hardly does anything to conceal it. He doesn’t have much trouble hailing a cab from Rosslyn toward Dupont. It’s a familiar path, though not one that Shane has usually taken. He has the cab stop at a different building and he walks to Ryan’s apartment. The flag is set in the flowerpot.

But for the first time, Shane presses the buzzer. He pulls his hat down to cover as much of his face as he can. The door opens. He goes up to Ryan’s door, though he’s never been there before. The number was on all those copies of the New York Times. He knocks.

Ryan opens the door with wet hair and his glasses off. He’s got pants on, if they can be called that -- but surely the white t-shirt sticking to his skin is meant to be worn under something.

“Hurry up,” Ryan says.

Shane shuts the door behind him.

“Shit, I can’t do this without my glasses,” Ryan says.

“Why should you?” Shane says.

“They get in the way,” Ryan tells him.

Shane looks around for a place to set the warm bottle of champagne, the damp napkin it’s wrapped in. Ryan’s coffee table is a fire hazard collection of books, files, papers, and ashtrays. Ryan follows Shane’s gaze over it.

“Anywhere is fine,” he says. But he picks up a stack of files and puts it on the floor.

His shoes are off, Shane notices. He goes back and kicks his own off by the door. Then he takes his jacket off.

“Should I offer you a glass of something?” Ryan asks. “Or can we skip all that?”

“Well,” Shane says. “We’ve each had a glass of something already.”

“Alright,” Ryan says. He sits on the couch with his thighs spread. The pants are very tight, no creases at all. Shane looks for long enough that he decides Ryan’s probably not wearing underwear. 

“Was I wrong?” he asks.

“No,” Shane says, swallowing.

“Thank god,” Ryan says. “I hate feeling like I’m jumping to conclusions without evidence.”

Shane walks over and starts loosening his tie.

“I think it’s kind of unfair,” Shane says. “I didn’t know I was giving you this kind of evidence.”

“Everything is evidence of something,” Ryan tells him. He reaches for Shane’s tie, pulling it out of his collar.

“I’m going to kiss you now, Shane,” he says.

And Shane would like to get that on tape.


End file.
